Sybase IQ

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Sybase IQ, formally Sybase Adaptive Server IQ, is a relational database software system used for data warehousing, produced by the Sybase corporation.

1 Features
2 Criticisms
3 External links
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Features

Unlike virtually every other relational database product, Sybase IQ stores data tables as sections of columns of data rather than as rows of data. This has a number of advantages; if a search is being done for items matching a particular value in a column of data, only the storage objects corresponding to that data column within the table need to be accessed. A row-based database would have to read the whole table top to bottom.

Additionally, the column-based storage enables IQ to compress data efficently on the fly; as each column is made up of a number of records of the same data type and size, compression can be very efficient and rapid. ^[1]

Sybase IQ has been tested to total data set sizes of one trillion rows and 155 terabytes of input data. The built-in compression reduced actual file storage requirements to only 55 terabytes. ^[2]

[edit] Criticisms

Sybase IQ is optimized for data warehouse type applications, where data is added to databases but typically not modified much if all, and the typical access is to search through the data.

The column based storage which enables good performance for reading through data somewhat slows down writing data (instead of just the last data object requiring updating with a row object, one data object per table column must be updated). Large volume data imports can still be reasonably efficient.

Performance in a transactional environment, where row records are accessed and updated regularly, is significantly worse than competing transactional row-based relational databases.